There have been a lot of famous Maxes in our time, Mad Max, Max Headroom, Maximus the Gladiator and Max Load (as featured in lifts across the world) but none have matched the cool, dark, brooding, pistol-packing chic of Max Payne. This third-person action-adventure shooter brings those slow-motion antics as modelled by Neo in the Matrix onto your home PC, as Max fights to clear his name and wreak his revenge on the drug fuelled psychos that killed his family. The game begins with Max returning home to find his house is a wreck and his wife and child murdered. Years pass and Max is now a drug enforcement agent desperately trying to bring those who ordered the killing of his family to justice, but Max's partner is killed and he becomes the prime suspect in the murder inquiry. Desperate and with nowhere to turn, on the run from the police and the mob, he goes underground to find those responsible for ruining his life. What follows is an adrenalin-pumped action game where you get to shoot first and ask questions later. Max has nothing left to loose and like another action hero in a certain Roman related film, he will have his vengeance, in this life or the next. Developer Remedy Entertainment has used the kind of movie-style special effects seen in the films of Hong Kong auteur John Woo and the Wachowski brothers to create a unique gaming experience. Max will dodge out of the line of fire whilst still letting his target have it with both barrels. The Max-FX game engine can be used to slow down the action so that you can actually see bullets leave the gun and feel the recoil. All this graphical whiz-bang comes at a price though. Minimum requirements are a Pentium II 450 MHz computer and you will need a good graphics card to get the full Maximum 3-D experience. But if you have the power your reward will be one of the best-looking and fun games to come out of the PC so far this year. --Kristen Bowditch

Features:- Max Payne is a fugitive undercover cop, hunted by both the cops & the mob. There is no hope for Max to win in this cat-and-mouse game -- all he can do is take as many of them as he can. How he does it is up to you.- Unique 3rd-person perspective takes into the darkest parts of New York- Shoot it out with thugs and crooked cops in the worst blizzard in a century- Play in Bullet Time -- slow-motion timing that lets you dodge shots- Dark and gritty just went to a whole new level!